


This is Not the End

by anenko



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Gen(eral) Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-04
Updated: 2004-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenko/pseuds/anenko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Harry Potter's seventh year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Not the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmogyral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/gifts).



> Written for nextian during the Harry Potter Gen(eral) Ficathon.

This is Harry Potter's seventh year.

*

 

This is a beginning:

The Hufflepuff common room, morning. Hannah Abbott's robes are brushing her ankles. She is wearing yesterday's robes, rumpled with travel. Her feet are bare. Her toes curl unhappily, and the carpet feels thick with dust and age and children's careless lives. Hannah scowls, shifts from foot to foot.

Hannah can not find her socks.

She can not find any luggage at all.

Hannah stares at her feet: long and broad, with nails carefully trimmed. Chipped red polish looks garish in the early morning light.

Come on Hannah, the others say, come on and hurry up.

Hannah shakes her head, and curls her toes, bites her lip and does not say: they'll make fun of me, if I go down like this. They'll make fun of me, and I won't be laughed at. She doesn't say a word, but smiles weakly when Susan winds her arm through Hannah's and hands her a pair of black cotton socks, neatly folded.

No one laughs, not at Hannah, not really. She is not the only one wearing yesterday's wrinkled robes.

*

This is a beginning:

Breakfast with the Slytherins. They are loud in the tense silence, sharp and cruel with the weight of their own fears. They are all suspect, watched from beneath lowered lashes and from behind shielding hands. Pansy Parkinson's lips curl, thin and furious over the rim of her glass. The glass is tall, a serpent weaves about it's length, and Pansy chokes as she takes a sip from it's contents.

Milk spills down her chin, and her eyes water with outrage and the overpowering taste of soap.

A startled burst of laughter ripples through the room, and Millicent presses a balled-up napkin into Pansy's fist. Gryffindors, Draco snarls, and the accusation flows down the table: Gryffindors, Gryffindors, Gryffindors, and Pansy knocks the glass to the floor. She holds her head high as she steps over broken shards and puddled milk.

At lunch, the floor is sticky still, and glass grinds beneath her heels.

*

This is a beginning:

Evening, after class, after supper. Padma sits in the Ravenclaw common room, legs curled beneath her, book balanced against the arm of a comfortably padded chair. She reads slowly, happily, comfortable with this old friend. She turns a page, and another, and another until her eyes ache, and she has been straining to find words in the darkness for too long now.

Padma rubs her eyes, looks up, and blinks. The room has grown dark: the candles have burnt down to nothing, and the fire is low in the grate. Unusual, Padma thinks, and closes her book. She will talk to Professor Flitwick about this tomorrow, Padma decides, tucking her book beneath her arm, but it is late, and she has only now realized how tired she truly is.

She finds her way upstairs by the faint glow at the tip of her wand, and falls into an unmade bed.

*

This is a beginning:

Not yet dawn, and Neville Longbottom wakes with a startled shout. Nightmare images linger all around him, and he grinds the palms of his hands against his eyelids. Sneezes, so loudly and suddenly he startles himself, and his skin itches with the fine shower of dust he has shaken free from his bed's heavy red drapes in his sleep.

He is suffocating, Neville thinks, and stumbles out of bed, wheezing. Harry's head is sticking out from behind his own curtains, staring blearily in Neville's direction. Neville smiles sheepishly, shrugs, and trips over the robes left piled on the floor.

The other boys are stirring. Neville rubs at his smarting knee, and decides that it is a good thing that he doesn't believe in signs.

*

This is Harry Potter's seventh year:

The NEWTs are drawing closer with each day.

He Who Must Not Be Named is an ever-increasing threat.

And quietly, slowly, the House Elves are rebelling.

*

There are a thousand possible beginnings to this story.

This is another:

Albus Dumbledore's office is touched by sings of neglect. The man himself is not. There are a stack of reports on his desk. He has not read them. He does not need to. The answer to his every question is standing before him.

Dobby is standing before Albus Dumbledore. Dobby's eyes are huge, but he does not shrink in upon himself, abased. He does not bob his head in agreement, and he does not wring his hands in fear. Before they were House Elves, his kind knew themselves as the People. Dobby remembers. He remembers that House Elves were never meant to be slaves.

Dumbledore's eyes do not twinkle. His lips do not twitch. He looks old, and tired, and sad. Even if he did not believe, there is nothing to be done now: the world is changing, and perhaps it is time. House Elves were not meant to be slaves, he agrees.

They understand one another.

*

This is history:

Before Hogwarts was yet a remote possibility, Absalom Adrastos met with a small and wretched delegation. They were, he learned, out of control: destroying themselves with their powerful, innate magic. Absalom Adrastos looked upon the bent and weeping heads with a wise and kindly eye.

He held out his hand.

I can help you, if you'll let me, he said.

And they looked up, as one, with hope in their eyes. And reached for him.

This is recorded fact, this is the truth.

More or less.

*

This is history:

Before Hogwarts was yet a remote possibility, Absalom Andrastos sought out the People. He robes were tattered and dust stained, the hem singed. The wizarding world, he said, at war with a powerful and wicked witch, and could not stand against her. The People looked at each other, and the wizard before them, and felt pity.

We will help you, they said.

My people will never forget this, he said, hand held to his heart in promise.

This is recorded fact, this is the truth.

More or less.

*

This may be the truth:

Before Hogwarts was yet a remote possibility, the Wizarding world and the People came together. Weeks passed in careful deliberation: the world was changing, and magic need change with it. On the seventeenth day, as the sun rose, blood was joined and oaths were sworn.

Together, as one, witches and wizards cried.

Together, as one, the People echoed.

Partners, and their alliance would make the world great. Together, and magic would be safe.

This may be the truth.

It probably isn't.

*

This is Harry Potter's seventh year, and the Boy Who Lived is without hope. He presses his hands against his eyes, so tight he sees stars, and opens them again to find Dobby before him.

Clothing has been left unwashed, dishes dirty. Lamps have been left unlit, beds unmade, and dust untouched. They are more than House Elves--they are the People, and this world, too, is theirs. It is time they take back their place in it.

Dobby stands before Harry Potter, and behind him Winky, and behind her another, and another, and another. They are not servants, not slaves, and this choice is theirs to make. They choose this boy. They choose freedom.

This is Harry Potter's seventh year, and the world will never be the same.


End file.
